Friday, 18 March 2011

Walter Sobchak is the kind of man who can get you a toe by 3
o’clock this afternoon. With nail polish. Walter Sobchak is knowledgeable. So,
if Walter Sobchak is prepared to sacrifice his beloved cricket apparel – the
whites – as the ringer in a ransom hand-off (albeit so that he can keep the
baksheesh), then we, the audience, cannot fail to appreciate just how important
the great game is to him (at least, I think those are the rules of ransom; I
know you need a hostage, uh, and that the hostage cannot be an acquaintance of
the kidnappers. Anyway, let’s not get bogged down in details…).

Of course, to the layman it’s not immediately obvious that the Coen
brothers’ masterpiece, The Big Lebowski, is a film about cricket. Principally, this is because they had to conceal this aspect so as to avoid alienating an American
audience almost completely ignorant of the sport, finer points or otherwise. No studio is
going to fund a cricket movie, man: think about it. Nevertheless, the maverick
filmmakers clearly know a thing or two about the gentleman’s game. Scratch
beneath the shaggy-dog detective-noir pastiche and it’s patently one of
the major themes of the film – I’d argue the central theme, no less. Indeed, any self-respecting
Dudeist ought to be able to decipher this from what they already knew to
be the movie’s key scene in terms of plot development: namely, when the nihilists break into the Dude’s
private residence and one of them smashes his answering machine with what the
screenplay refers to as a “cricket paddle”. That the Coens use this misnomer
instead of the more recognized term – bat – is overwhelming, irrefutable proof
that the phrase is acting as a shibboleth, a secret code designed to throw
non-initiates off the scent.

So it is that the centrality of cricket to the film’s ethos
has been overlooked by both critics and devotees alike. Until now. So, let’s
have a glance at some of the movie’s many, many cricketing observations,
starting with the most learned character’s thoughts…

WALTER’S INSIGHTS:

(1) THE IMPORTANCE OF ADAPTING TO CONDITIONS

Despite tending to deride combat on parched terrain (as with his scornful
dismissal of the “bunch of fig-eaters with towels on their head trying to find
reverse on a Soviet tank”), Walter is obviously something of an expert when it
comes to playing spin on the ‘dustbowls’ of the Asian subcontinent. “I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand...”He realizes that the guard you take is crucial when batting
on a worn, crumbling pitch. You have to be flexible, moving over to off stump
to combat sharply spun off-breaks and left-arm wrist spin; or, conversely,
batting outside leg stump against leg-spinners and slow left-arm orthodox to
ensure that your pads are out of the line of the stumps (especially in the age
of Hawk-Eye and the Decision Review System). Dude, meanwhile, is clearly struggling to pick the direction
of the spin – be that the offie’s doosra or the leggie’s wrong’un – and is
therefore of little help in the mid-pitch conference: “A lotta ins. A lotta
outs. A lotta strands to keep in ol’ Duder’s head.” So, ignoring his compadre’s
flustered inability to read the turn, Walter knows the best way to go against
left-arm wrist-spin, what the dangers are… “The Chinaman is not the issue here Dude. I’m talking about
unchecked aggression …” He understands that, for both left-arm wrist spin
(‘Chinamen’) and slow bowling in general, the basic modus operandi must revolve
around discipline and accumulation, fundamental pillars in the war of attrition
against high-quality tweakers and twirlers. Walter also knows that, after a gruelling tour in Asia playing on dustbowls, there’s nothing like coming
back to a good old fashioned ‘green-top’: “This was a valued rug.” (The square
community would doubtless argue that preparing pitches to suit your own bowling
attack is the work of “men who are unable to achieve on a level field of play:
cowards, weaklings, bums,” but they can go fuck ‘emselves.) (2) AFFINITY FOR LIMITED-OVERS FORMATSThen there’s Walter’s understanding of modern ODI and
Twenty20 cricket…

“Over the line!!”

You can’t be bowling no balls, especially not in the era of
the free hit. Get your run-up sorted out.

“Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are
rules.”

When you’re playing a league game, a game that determines who enters the
next round-robin, there are certain things that have to be abided by. Frankly,
the Dude, whilst applauded for his placid nature, is wrong to say “so his toe
was over a little. Who gives a shit?” It’s a good job Walter’s there to give a
shit about the rules, otherwise people would be bowling off 19 yards…

“The man in the black pyjamas, Dude. A worthy fuckin' adversary.”

More
generally, Walter is clearly au fait with the international ODI cricket scene,
too, and realizes that New Zealand, while much depleted of late, still possess
dynamic players like McCullum, Guptill, Taylor, Ryder, Oram and Vettori, and are therefore
very much a force to be reckoned with in the shorter forms of the game.

(3) TACTICS

The field of military theory has long overlapped with
cricket. For instance, prior to the 2005 Ashes, Australia’s coach, John Buchanan,
gave his charges as reading material Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War. Walter also
learnt much from combat, principally concerning that old mantra of cricket
coaches: Keep it simple. For, if there’s one thing he learnt in ‘Nam, it’s that
“once a plan gets too complex, everything can go wrong…” Dude comes to realize
this later, when his thinking about the whereabouts of Bunny and the money had
become “a little uptight.”

(4) TECHNOLOGY

Despite the recent introduction of DRS, Walter clearly
possesses the attributes to become a top-flight umpire – with or without
technological assistance – since he has the intuitive grasp of the game that’s
needed to be able to read from the batsman’s body language when he has tickled
one through to the ‘keeper: “this guy fucking walks. I’ve never been more certain
of anything in my life.”

(5) BIOMECHANICS

Walter could also help in the early diagnosis of the stress-fractured
backs that have afflicted the game’s speedsters, since he has “seen a lot of
Spinals.”

(6) INTERNATIONAL CRICKETING POLITICS

“We're scattering the Ashes”

What Walter means here is that, where the MCC have
previously been highly intransigent in their reluctance to allow any victorious
Australian tourists to take the cherished urn home, he would adopt a (perhaps
surprising) conciliatory position and accede to the demands of Cricket
Australia, thus demonstrating his often overlooked statesmanlike qualities. However, before any formal handover he’d need to know whether there was a
Ralph’s in the vicinity.

(7) PROFESSIONALISM vs. AMATEURISM

Whilst a clear advocate of professionalism in the face of a
bygone era of dilettante cricketers – “a bunch of fucking amateurs” – Walter
nevertheless refuses to lose sight of the fact that it’s not life and death:

Dude: “This isn't a fucking game,
man”.

Walter: “Oh but it is a game, you said
so yourself”.

I think it’s obvious from these many pearls of Sobchakian
wisdom that leather-on-willow-mongers can learn much from the Big Pole/Jew. But
what about his teammates and the other folk they encounter in our story? Well,
they are less knowledgeable, sure, but they do have the odd thing to say…

DUDE’S INSIGHTS:

“I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man”

The Dude is clearly a fan of South African domestic cricket. Clearly. He may
support any one of the Titans, Lions, Warriors, Cobras, or Dolphins (being a
man of impeccable fairness, he probably supports them all), but he’s
magnanimous enough not to let parochial issues get in the way of his support
for the game’s heritage…

(1) PRESERVE THE GAME’S TRADITIONAL FORMAT

“We held on! We held on! We...held...on!” In direct contradiction of the winners-and-losers philosophy of American sport,
the Dude is every bit as excited by a hard-fought draw, which is the obvious
interpretation to be made of his reaction to the hand-off. OK, they didn’t get
the girl back, but neither did the nihilists “get the fuckin’ money”. Here’s a man
who likes his Test cricket and is “not in to the whole brevity thing” of
Twenty20.

(2) ONLY SWING ONE WAY

“Obviously you're not a golfer”

On the one hand, the Dude is making a sarcastic point about Jackie Treehorn’s thug’s failure to recognize his bowling ball; on the other hand, in line with
the clear thematic presence of cricket in the film, there’s also a “hidden
message” here: batsmen, don’t play too much golf otherwise it will interfere
with your technique.

THEODORE DONALD KERABATSOS AND THE GAME

This is not so much an insight as an admission of affinity
for the game from the third member of the bowling team: “Donny who loved the
outdoors. And bowling” was clearly someone who propelled what is known in the
trade as a ‘heavy ball’, as unambiguously implied by his line: “I’m throwing
rocks tonight. You guys are dead in the water.”

JESUS QUINTANA’S INSIGHTS

Despite the more obvious connotations of his name, Jesus was
one of the perspicacious reformists who realized that Test matches had to cast
off their languid colonial rhythms – timeless Tests; having a day off in the
middle of the game – and be played on 5 consecutive days, principally because
Sunday was a non-working day for the paying public and could therefore increase
revenue. This forward thinking was succinctly articulated when he made his
landmark representation to cricket’s ruling body, the ICC: “What’s this ‘day of
rest’ shit? What’s this bullshit? I don’t fuckin’ care. It don’t matter to Jesus.”

He’s also not that keen on the ‘art’ of sledging, which he
regards as “bush league psyche-out stuff. Laughable, man!”

*******

There are other gems of cricketing analysis that we don’t
have time to go over (or invent) here, but suffice to say the true message of
the film transcends cricket, and applies equally to all sports. I’m talking of
course about the importance of equanimity in the face of victory and defeat,
sentiments expressed in the oft-cited lines of Rudyard Kipling: “If you can
meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same”.
The Stranger sums it up pithily: “sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes the
bar, wal, he eats you.”

So, cricket’s a game of “strikes and gutters”, but, win or
lose, you’ve just got to have a good sarsaparilla or a couple of “oat sodas”
after the game and take it easy, man.

It’s just a game, man.

* A version of this piece was published inThe Dudespaperbut
the lazy f**kers didn't edit it properly.